Tim Hubbard shows how to build a free digital guidebook for your Airbnb using Notion instead of paid services like Hostfully. He walks through examples like restaurant lists and housekeeper checklists, then explains how to share the Notion link with guests via text at booking and check-in.
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Episode 63
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Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the Structure Riches. Glad you are here again. I want to talk this week about a resource that I think you could definitely use in your property. It just sort of dawned on me. It's something I've talked to before, but it's going to be a way that you can create a free digital guidebook, actually as many as you want, and all sorts of other kind of cool, free but very efficient options to help manage your, your short term rental. Let's get right into it. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. We'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Quick actionable items to acquire, manage and scale your portfolio. I'm your host, Tim Hubbard. So I'm down here in Brazil still and when friends come visit, you know, they always ask for restaurant recommendations, things like that. And I, I used to always text them over. Yeah, I really like this place. Really like this place. It's located here, you know, make sure if you're in town, you don't, you don't miss this spot. Same goes when I'm in Colombia and friends come to visit. And I've been using Notion for a while. You've heard me talk about that before. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, the first episode I did on it was episode 63. It gives an overview of Notion. So if you haven't already heard that one, go back and check it out. It's going to help you understand this episode a little bit better. But basically I realize, shoot, why don't I put all this stuff in Notion and then I'll just send this link to my friends when they come so I don't have to text the same thing to everyone. Notion has these capabilities. So now I have a little link for my favorite restaurant. Someone comes, I just boom, I send them the link. They don't need an app, they don't need anything like that. They just open the website and boom, they can see all my favorite restaurants divided by category because I'm really like OCD like that, I guess. And I've got them. Or I maybe just really like restaurants. So way easier for me. And with Google Map locations embedded, Notion is amazing. Go back and check out episode 63. I'm gonna give you a real quick snippet about it right now. So this episode makes a little more sense if you haven't already started using it. But Notion is essentially a platform to integrate all of your online resources, your Google Drive, your Dropbox, your YouTube videos, your photos, PDF files, it's a interface that you can create, customize to organize all of these different things. So.
That is notion and that, that was one. It kind of dawned on me, yeah, I could just send this link. And then something else happened. And this is much more related to short term rentals, but I was working with a housekeeper here and she was missing a few things. I'm sure this has happened to you if you've been operating short term rentals for a while. Sometimes things get missed and when things get missed, it's good to create a ch checklist. So I created a checklist for my housekeeper and then I sent it to her, same way I just sent her the link. She could open it up, she could see pictures of the way I wanted things. She could see itemized, bulleted points on, you know, make sure you leave the towels in the bathroom, make sure, you know, so on and so on. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, why are we not sending these links to our guests? Sometimes when they ask for more information. And then I realized, shoot, I could create a whole guidebook on here and send it to my guests for free. Now I use hostfully guidebooks. It's a digital guidebook platform. That's what it's designed for. I think it's awesome. And I'm not saying that I'm going to switch over from that, but if you are looking for a free option, this can be a really good source and if anything, it just gets you into using Notion, which I know that you can use in every aspect of your life. I do, I use it all the time. It's available on mobile platforms. Even if it just gets you using Notion a little bit more. I think that's enough reason in itself, but it's. You could make a pretty sophisticated guidebook in Notion and just easily send a link to your guests. Now we like to send our guidebook links when someone first makes a reservation, that's when things are fresh in their mind and then also right before they check in. And so we send them through SMS text message. We send a link, they open it, they can view it on their phone. It's fresh in their mind. Of course, you need to make sure that you get personal information from your guests when you get a reservation from them. If they're booking on Airbnb, for example, we always ask this, after they make the reservation, will you please share your primary contact phone number, the best contact phone number and the best email. That way we have their information. And it's the text message. It's a good way to send important information over to your guests. So consider that if you're not using a guidebook already, I do really like the hostfully guidebooks. That's what they're designed for, but they do cost money. If you're looking for another option or you're looking for an option to send checklists to your housekeepers or photos or videos or anything related your properties, you can do that with Notion. It's got a little share button at the top. So after you create your page, Notion is free by the way, depending on what version you're using, but the free version will get you really far. You can share that page and all you need is that link. You can copy and send that link to whoever you want in the whole world. It's basically like them opening a webpage. So again, I love Notion. If you haven't heard our episode, I talk a lot more about Notion. Some of the cool things it can do. We also did another recent episode where I was talking about organizing my team and how we do our reviews with Notion and That is episode 124. So you're probably going to hear me talking a lot about Notion. Just check it out. It's really cool. Maybe just watch a YouTube video to pique your interest if you haven't already started using it. And if you want to find those other episodes in an easy way, you can go to our website at Strict. You could just search Notion. We've got all of our episodes on there and we've got lots of links to other great information on there as well. You can get our house rules and our show notes here, so check those out. There's tons and tons of free resources out there and available. Notion again is another good way to organize all of those free resources. So I hope you guys are doing well wherever you are out in this big awesome world and your properties are doing well and you're just as excited about short term rentals as I am. And thank you again for tuning in and I will catch you next week. Ciao. If you're looking for a ton of free resources, well you can check out the links in the show notes or head to our website restmethods.com where you'll find free guides, house rules, and my ebook on finding the best short term rental properties. Thanks for tuning in.
